Sindhu’s Triumph

narayan devanathan
Aug 27, 2017 · 3 min read

Pusarla. Pusarla!

Her neck comes around, less by the power of a physical effort and more by way of a natural reaction to hearing her name being called by the Australian chair umpire.

Her mind comes out of the exhaustion-and-concentration-encircled fence to ask the question.

“What?” her expression asks wordlessly.

On court.

There’s a dazed, uncomprehending expression on her face.

On court. Now.

Perhaps drinking water will slow time down.

Pusarla!

Nope. I can still hear her. Maybe chewing a piece of the energy bar will.

Pusarla, Pusarla!

Why is she still calling out? I’m walking on to the court now, aren’t I?

Yellow card for ignoring my warning.

Okay now. In position. Hold on, Nozumi. Okay, I’m good. Ha!

Gently over the net. A cross-court feathered drop. A lob into the backhand court. Forth. Back. Smash. Retrieve. Feint. Lob. Back. Forth. Down the line. Shot #41. Shot #42.

She’s on her hands and knees now. The point is over.

But the game isn’t over. Not yet. Not by a long margin.

Still on her knees, head hung beneath her chest, heaving. She’s on all fours. Except her left hand is showing signs of life of its own. The fingers slowly curl and ball into a fist. And while the rest of her maybe gasping for breath, this fist pumps the air, just a couple of inches off the ground.

“C’mon!” the fist says. “You came through a 73-shot rally and lived to tell the tale. A 42-shot rally is par for the course. Let’s do this.”

“Ha!”

Bharat mata ki jai! screams an unthinking fan in the background.

I wonder if Rohit Sharma went on to score another AW139, although that apparently doesn’t belong to the Adani group. But how was Honeypreet-whatever-her-name-was allowed on the helicopter or is the judge going to deliver the sentence via video conference? I saw that the Delhi Police tweeted schools and offices would be open as usual I will go for a run in the morning and have barley pearls for breakfast by the time I finish hat 2pm meeting I wonder if I can change the venue of the 5pm at least Rex Tillerson seems to have wait, what is that report from Myanmar about civilians being…

And in the instant that it took for Sindhu to unclench her fist, get off the floor and face up to Okuhara again, the rest of the universe balled itself into a piece of paper and threw itself into an unseen, worthless dustbin beyond my consciousness. Sindhu’s Ha! reminded me that nothing else existed at this point.

And then they were at it again.

A diminutive, relentless little force of nature on one side of the tug of war versus a yellow ball of energy that ebbed and flowed, ebbed and flowed.

Sindhu leads. 19–17. Okuhara wins the point. 18–19. Okuhara levels the score. 19–19. And there it is, matchpoint for Okuhara. 20–19. Not quite yet. Sindhu draws level. 20–20.

And then my rib cage makes its presence felt. Not because of itself. But because of my beating heart thumping against it.

Sindhu is gasping for breath. But my heart — like perhaps a billion others — is pumping oxygen into her blood. After all, she has connected her heart to an entire nation’s lifeblood at this point.

And at 22–20, it’s not Okuhara’s shining victory or Sindhu’s exhausted triumph of spirit, mind and body that’s on my mind.

It’s a wish. For all of India.

That we can see what Sindhu has just done for what it is.

That she wrought a triumph of all that the human spirit and body are capable of — in all their purity, and inspite of our foibles, and inspite of the world around us. A triumph of such a nature that is so rare, so genuine, and so uplifting.

And that if we tried with even a fraction of the effort and will she has put into this triumph, we could — even in a hyperventilating world with the attention span of a gnat — celebrate this victory for India and what it can be for at least one more day. And not give in to our baser instincts.

My wish is that we can delay our return to whataboutery and head-shaking and hand-wringing and mud-slinging by just one more measly day.

Because what that will be is the best tribute we can pay to Sindhu. And to ourselves.

As someone said after her Olympic silver medal, saare jahaan se accha, Sindhustaan hamara.

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narayan devanathan

Written by

Facts, fiction, and the occasional home truth in advertising. Marathoner. Group Executive & Strategy Officer, Dentsu India.

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